The Chicago Cubs clinched a post-season series at Wrigley Field for the first time ever, as Kyle Schwarber, Anthony Rizzo and Javier Baez hit home runs in a 6-4 win over the St Louis Cardinals on Tuesday, winning the National League Division Series 3-1.
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Venezuelan closer Hector Rondon at the mound in game four against the St. Louis Cardinals at Wrigley Field Stadium.
They partied in Pittsburgh after beating the Pirates in last week’s wild-card game.
Kershaw, the reigning NL MVP and three-time Cy Young Award victor, snapped his incongruous five-start losing streak in playoff games; the longest in Dodgers history.
Arrieta has thrown 67 more innings this season than any previous year in his career, and there are possibly two seven-game series to go.
Over the next two innings, The Cubs bullpen shut down the Cardinals, securing a convincing win. NBC 5’s Katie Kim reports. Schwarber’s homer that helped his club clinch the NLDS on the North Side of Chicago is going to receive Pope-like protection for an undisclosed amount of time. In the four-game series with St. Louis the team showed a solid playoff moxie that allowed them to stage three comebacks against the perennial National League power. The Cubs skipper is likely to go with the left-hander Lester in Game 1 and Arrieta in Game 2, simply because the innings are piling up on Arrieta like never before and in his last outing he was not almost as sharp as he has been.
Hammel singled on a line drive to center field for Starlin Castro to score in the bottom of the second before shortstop Baez blasted a three-run homer over the right fence for the Cubs to lead 4-2.
Adrian Gonzalez opened the scoring with an RBI single and he later scored on Justin Turner’s two-run single.
Next series up they will likely face another quality team in either the New York Mets or Los Angeles Dodgers, but they should be considered a much more serious contender now than they were before the series. He said he might have made the injury worse when he played in Game 3; he winced on a swing-and-miss in the fourth inning of Monday night’s loss, and then was removed for a pinch hitter in the sixth. “They also have a really good lineup”, Lackey said. “There was considerable weakness in his thumb”, manager Mike Matheny said.
Cubs: SS Addison Russell had tests Tuesday morning on his hamstring and didn’t play.
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The series shifts back to Los Angeles on Thursday night, with fellow Dodgers ace Zack Greinke scheduled to start against Jacob deGrom.
